Wireless digital communication networks are coming into widespread us in today's world. Such networks are suitable for communicating digital data, such as computer files, reliably, quickly and flexibly.
To send data from a one station in the network (a “transmitting station”) to another (a “receiving station”), the transmitting station first divides the data into time-sliced pieces. Then, the transmitting station adds network routing and error-checking information to each of the pieces to create protocol data units (PDUs), which for many protocols are called “packets.” The transmitting station then transmits each PDU separately over the network. The receiving station uses the routing information to receive the PDUs via the network, uses the error-checking information to verify the segments of data and reassembles the segments to recreate the data.
Error checking is important, because data corruption can have serious consequences. Data corruption can occur as a result of collision (multiple PDUs being transmitted concurrently), external interference (e.g., radio frequency interference from without the network) or insufficient transmit power (e.g., if the distance over which the PDUs are transmitted becomes too great). If a particular segment of data is found to be corrupt, the PDU containing the corrupt segment must be retransmitted, which takes time and consumes network bandwidth.
Wireless digital communication networks are also capable of communicating streaming media—digitized or digital audio (e.g., voice or music) or video—to allow, for example, telephone conversations to be carried over the network. Streaming media is simply digital data and appears no different to the network from a computer file. However, unlike a computer file, streaming media is often interactive and is thus constrained to be time-sensitive. As a result, rarely is sufficient time available to retransmit corrupt segments.
In view of this significant constraint, prior art wireless digital communication network designs have focused on altogether avoiding the need for retransmission by eliminating error in data. One way to avoid retransmission is to boost transmission power. Unfortunately, this requires additional power and shortens battery life. Another way is to limit the range over which the data is transmitted. Limiting range, however, limits the flexibility and utility of the network. Yet another way is to add error-correcting data to each PDU. While error-correcting information may be used to reconstruct the data at the receiving station, the error-correcting information requires additional network bandwidth to communicate and therefore limits the capacity of the network to handle data. Still another way is to improve receiver sensitivity or noise or fading immunity, but this makes the receiver design more complex and expensive. Yet still another way is to reduce the data transmission rate. Unfortunately, this reduces network efficiency. None of these approaches has proven satisfactory.
Accordingly, what is needed in the art is a better way to communicate streaming media over a wireless digital communication network. More specifically, what is needed in the art is a way to increase the range or bandwidth of a wireless digital communication network with respect to the communication of streaming media.